Copyright ÂŠ 1993, 2011 by Karlene Faith
Originally published by Press Gang Publishers, November 1993
First Seven Stories Press Edition July 2011
The quotation by Hyemeyohsts Storm on p. 9 is from Seven Arrows (New York: Ballantine
Books, 1972), p. 213
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
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Book design by Jon Gilbert
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Faith, Karlene.
Unruly women : the politics of confinement and resistance / Karlene Faith. -1st Seven Stories Press ed.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-60980-137-3 (pbk.)
1. Female offenders. 2. Women prisoners. I. Title.
HV6046.F25 2011
365'.6082--dc23
2011018084
Printed in the United States
987654321

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CHA PTER THREE

The Punishment: Involuntary
Confinement

J

UST AS THE LABELS placed on women who break the law are laden
with ideologically invested social meanings, as discussed in the introduction to Chapter Two, so is the nomenclature of punishment institutions
problematic. I begin, then, with a quick review of the terms. The first lockup arrangements in early England were called gaols (that is, jails) and their
purpose was short-term incarceration of persons who were awaiting trial or
execution, as distinct from modern prisons in which confinement became the
punishment, rather than the place of waiting for the punishment. The precursors of prisons were the early poorhouses, workhouses and houses of correction,
established in pre-industrialized England as a way of removing undesirable elements from the streets of new urban centres, and, ostensibly, reforming idle
or deviant citizens by teaching them the disciplines and habits of hard work.
In practice they served to warehouse people who were stigmatized as unruly,
dangerous classes, and who were crowded together in malodorous, filthy and
diseased environments, resulting in high death rates.
Early North American prisons were constructed in the 19th century under
the influence of Quaker social reformers. They called them penitentiaries
because it was idealized that the wrong-doers would use their time to seek
penance through solitary meditation, religious instruction, discipline and
labour. These penitentiaries, a product of emerging capitalist political
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economies, were in fact maximum security prisons which confined legally convicted criminals who became feared and abused convicts as soon as they entered
the institution. The Quakers also established early reformatories, which in
theory similarly reflected on the emerging belief, informed by religion and
new medical discourses, that wrong-doers were not “born that way,” and could
be trained to overcome their bad habits and attitudes. Women and youth,
because their crimes were generally less frequent and less serious than those of
adult males, were thought to be particularly well-suited to the goals of reformation. However, as exemplified almost a century later by the increased
incarceration of unruly teenagers in 1950s reform schools (and industrial schools)
these institutions were no less barbaric than early adult prisons. They were
appropriately nicknamed “schools of crime” by critics, who observed that
youth entered these places as anti-social rebels guilty of relatively minor crimes,
but were contaminated by one another and graduated as embittered social outcasts with few life options outside the world of crime.
During the 1950s the fields of psychology and psychiatry were popularized,
and practices of treatment interventions were imposed on convicted offenders as
a means of correcting their behaviours—just as the early houses of correction were
intended to do two centuries earlier but now with the “benefit” of experts and
professionals. The modern era of corrections which began nominally in the 1930s,
gained momentum and definition in the 1950s and has been maintained to the
present time. Women’s prisons, specifically, are now most commonly officially
described as correctional facilities, centres or institutions, or treatment centres,
which house inmates (as in mental hospitals), residents or clients who are under
the watchful eyes of correctional officers. Informally, adult women in prison have
been addressed by line staff both as the girls, to stress their infantilized status,
and as ladies, to underscore the reformist intention of refining these rowdy
offenders. With feminist influences seeping even into correctional institutions,
women in prisons are now often referred to as women. When women first arrive
at these institutions they are placed in what is sometimes confoundingly referred
to as the reception guidance centre, suggesting a benign welcoming and orientation process, or, more baldly, the receiving unit, as in a warehouse.
Progressive prison planners, administrators and staff prefer the soft jargon
to hardline language because it suggests a distinction between the brutal institutions of yore and modern penal philosophies. However, to the women
themselves, the euphemisms are offensive. To the person who is forcibly confined within them, these places are prisons and they are prisoners, and in this

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chapter that is how I will refer to them. These words are the most direct means
of describing a situation where people are held captive, locked behind bars,
walls and fences, under constant surveillance, their every move regulated by
guards operating under the authority of the state. I commonly speak of guards
rather than correctional officers because, whatever other function they might
serve, according to institutional philosophy and their own orientation, the
bottom line is that they must literally watch and scrutinize these women to
maintain the security and custodial functions of any prison.
The most poignant argument against euphemistic language has been reiterated to me from time to time over the years by bewildered women who
hadn’t realized they were being sent to prison: they were shocked to discover
that the correctional institution or treatment centre to which the judge sentenced them was not a hospital, or a therapeutic environment, or a temporary
assessment or reception facility, but rather a cold, undisguised prison from which
they could not escape.
The history of unruly, defiant women is the history of men’s efforts to control them (Chesney-Lind, 1980), and this translates into practical terms in the
context of criminal justice. “Criminal law has been codified by male legislators,
enforced by male police officers and interpreted by male lawyers and judges”
(Moyer, 1992: 18). Agreed. It is almost invariably men who put women in
prison, but more specifically it has been particular laws, particular men, and particular women who are implicated. And certainly men are much more likely to
imprison other men than to imprison women outside the confines of the home.
There are numerous reasons why the crimes of some women may result in
some combination of probation, fine, community service or suspended sentence, whereas other women are targeted for prison confinement. Any of the
following factors, alone or in some combination, may contribute to whether
or not a woman will be incarcerated:

· seriousness of the crime;
· past record;
· persuasiveness of lawyers’ arguments for or against the defendant;
· outcome of plea bargaining;
· legal technicalities concerning evidence;
· degree of publicity and public opinion concerning the crime;
· familial status (especially, level of conscientiousness toward dependent children);
· the convicted woman’s age and state of physical or mental health;

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· regional court biases related to cultural, class and/or racial identity;
· the defendants’ conformity to or deviance from mainstream gender role
standards;
· sentencing patterns of particular jurisdictions;
· availability of cell space;
· proximity of prisons to the sentencing court;
· known community-based alternatives to institutionalization; and, often
most importantly,
the
· opinion of the probation officer who writes the pre-sentence report
on which judges base their decisions.

Prison philosophies, structures and policies are remarkably similar throughout
the Western world. The penal systems which I know most directly, from contact with imprisoned women and men, staff and administrators, over the
course of almost twenty-five years as an action-researcher, educator and prisoners’ advocate, are those in California (state and federal) and Canada (B.C.
provincial and federal). In this extended chapter I make frequent reference to
institutions with which I’m familiar, and to women who have been incarcerated in them. For purposes of analysis I also draw from the criminological and
sociological literature, particularly that produced by feminist scholars over the
past two decades in Canada, Britain and the United States. My own perspectives are those of someone who views modern prisons as monuments to the
failures of liberal democracies to meet their promises. I don’t assume that I can
speak for incarcerated women in all their diversities, just as no single or few
individual(s) in prison can speak for all other prisoners. My hope in these
pages is to contribute to a more critical appraisal of the uses to which prisons
are put. In the two preceding chapters I discussed the structural and discursive
processes in the social construction of crime and punishment. In this chapter
I describe various features of women’s penal institutions which, short of execution, serve as the apex of punishment processes.

PURPOSES OF PRISONS
The traditional rationale for the use of prisons is the glaring imposition of
punishment as the “just desserts” means of paying one’s debt to a centralized

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state, which must be compensated for harm done to an impersonal “society.”
The forgotten individual victim, if there is one, becomes subordinate to the
adjudication process. In addition to the necessity of punishment, a belief
which has never been discarded, are the purported modern goals of (1) specific deterrence, whereby the individual offender is temporarily incapacitated
and expected to refrain from future crime as a result of the incarcerative experience; (2) general deterrence, whereby the threat of incarceration is intended
to deter citizens at large from committing criminal offences; (3) crime prevention and/or public safety, which is to say that, at least for the period of
incarceration, the guilty person is somewhat refrained from engagement in
illegal and actual or potentially dangerous behaviours; and (4) finally, most
problematically, the ideal of rehabilitation.
Rehabilitation, as a modern concept, is metaphorically derived from the
ancient practice of banishment, whereby the individual lost his dignity by
being cast naked into the wilderness to contemplate his anti-social behaviour.
Once he (and the mythological figure is a “he”) has recovered his sense of
social belonging and responsibility, and has attained forgiveness and absolution
through appeals to and communion with his god and his conscience, he can
regain his right to be part of society. The French word habiller means “to
dress,” or “to wrap up”; to be rehabilitated is to start life anew, once again fully
“clothed” in the garb of respectability with one’s dignity restored.
The idea of rehabilitation is most consistent with the belief that criminal
behaviours stem from flaws or weaknesses of the individual. Attention shifts
from the event of the crime to the person who “falls” from grace due to sin or
sickness. Deviation from consensual behavioural norms violates an abstract
social contract, whereby each individual has a responsibility to contribute to
society in exchange for the state’s protections of his or her human rights. In this
paradigm such individuals can be “saved,” “cured” or otherwise reformed
through combinations of religious and moral instruction, psychological treatment and/or vocational training in combination with the behaviour-modifying
effects of losing one’s freedoms. Early “point” systems, as developed in 19th
century Australian prisons under the influence of the reformer Alexander
Maconochie, are still practiced in many North American reformatories over a
century later. Prisoners could earn back their freedoms by gaining points for
good behaviours and moving up the custody classification ladder, from maximum to minimum security, while demonstrating their potential usefulness to
society. Such utilitarian reformers have been also concerned with modernizing

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the conditions of imprisonment so as to make the punitive environment more
conducive to rehabilitation. In Canada, the first female Member of Parliament
(in 1921), Agnes MacPhail, was a serious critic of the commonplace barbarities
of Canadian prisons, such as hanging prisoners from the ceiling for brutal beatings. In 1925, just a few years after her impassioned crusade, construction
began on a new women’s institution which would finally, in 1934, begin separating federally sentenced females from the horrors of the male penitentiary
(NPCFO, 1978: 4). Some women were retained at the men’s penitentiary for several years and the new women’s prison wasn’t put to full use until 1938.
More radical reformers have focused not on individual offenders but
rather on both the social conditions which produce anti-social behaviours
(some of which are then legislated as crimes against the State, which stands
in for any individual victims), and the discriminatory practices of punishment whereby certain populations are more vulnerable than others to the
state processes of criminalization. Ultimately, the viability of the notion of
rehabilitation is challenged both by the reality that most prisoners will be
returned to the same social conditions which generated the undesirable
behaviours, and by the indisputably punitive nature of prisons as a measure
and expression of power relations within any given society. As characterized
by Michel Foucault:
Prison is the only place where power is manifested in its naked state, in its most
excessive form, and where it is justified as moral force. . . . What is fascinating about
prisons is that, for once, power doesn’t hide or mask itself; it reveals itself as tyranny
pursued into the tiniest details; it is cynical and at the same time pure and entirely
“justified,” because its practice can be totally formulated within the framework of
morality. Its brutal tyranny consequently appears as the serene domination of Good
over Evil, of order over disorder. (Foucault, 1977: 210)

The straightforward punishment model, which all prisons represent at their
foundation, is an outgrowth of a retributive philosophy. The physical routinization, militaristic discipline, and punishment by physical confinement and
controls that characterize prisons were designed for male “criminals,” and
females were stuffed into stifling attic, basement or other isolated quarters of
male institutions. Although in Britain “women made up around a quarter of
all those sent to local prisons and around an eighth of all those sent to convict
prisons up to the 1880s,” by the end of the century females constituted just 4

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percent of the incarcerated population (Zedner, 1991: 100). A century later
this disproportionate ratio has remained fairly constant in Western prisons.
As early as 1813, having observed the shocking conditions of female prisoners in male institutions, the Quaker social crusader Elizabeth Fry set the
tone for gender-segregated prisons. Her Victorian, class-biased influence,
whereby upper-class “ladies” would strive to improve the morality of lowerclass women, has been periodically revived throughout Western nations into
the late 20th century. She introduced the notion of matrons and wardresses
who, through maternal supervision of prisoners, would instill family values
and feminine manners in unruly women by teaching them the value of hard
work, personal hygiene, basic literacy and religious instruction (Ibid.: 118–
19, 123). These priorities were intact during the late 1970s when I appealed
to the Elizabeth Fry group in Los Angeles for assistance for a woman who had
spent virtually all her adult life in and out of prison. They informed me that
they only worked with women who “showed promise.” By this they meant
primarily white women with middle-class potential: they didn’t work with
“ghetto” women or women with histories of drug addiction.
As we approach the 21st century, more women have entered corrections as
a career, served on official task forces, and entered academic, legal and other
professions which bring focus to “the female offender.” Contemporary feminists, in particular, have at least marginally affected policies and endorsed
changes which reflect on gender-specific needs of women in prison. To the
discussion they bring less moral judgement and more understanding of social
problems as they affect women than was true of Elizabeth Fry and other early
reformers, who wanted to improve conditions and introduce moral training
for women without altering fundamental class, sex, and race discriminations.

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
Prisons were constructed in the 19th century parallel to the gradual reduction
in and eventual elimination of capital punishment in all Western nations
except the United States. Prisons also replaced public lashings and other public
humiliations, and theoretically imprisonment substituted for the punishments
of torture. In conventional wisdom, this change signified a humanitarian
impulse. However, in Michel Foucault’s view (1979), the shift to incarceration occurred in large part due to shifts in the dominant discourses, from

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centralized power to diffused disciplinary techniques and “normalizing judgements” as practiced by emerging professions. He observes a changed focus
from punishment of the body to a focus on the human mind and soul. This
analysis allows for the complex social and political dynamics behind this significant historical shift, but it doesn’t allow for the fundamental reality that
prisoners continued to be subject to physical tortures behind the walls.
Preceding long-term imprisonment as punishment for serious offences was
the 18th century British practice of banishing criminals through “transportation,” whereby convicted persons could escape the gallows by being sent to
the colonies as indentured servants. They were sent first to eastern regions of
what became the United States of America until, following the War of Independence (1775–1783), the new government refused to accept them. They
were then sent, in ever greater numbers, to Australia, a colony founded on the
backs of Aboriginal peoples by 150,000 of Britain’s rejects, of whom less than
25,000 were women—and many of these were sent as “sexual commodities”
for both the male convicts and the colony’s predominantly male settlers
(Dobash, Dobash and Gutteridge, 1986: 33). Transportation, which continued until 1852, was not necessarily a better option than the gallows: assault,
starvation, disease and death were rampant on the boats, and for women there
was the added burden of sexual exploitation and abuse (Beattie, 1986;
Hughes, 1987: 129–57; Zedner, 1991: 174–75). Further, when (or if ) they
arrived on the shores of the new land, they were immediately subjected to the
indignities of being held as servile property.
As noted above, the basic idea of banishment was not an invention of the
modern age; ancient and Aboriginal societies similarly had the notion that the
best way to instill social responsibility in troublesome individuals was to temporarily separate them from their community, so they could reflect in solitude
on their misdeeds. The modern version of banishment, however, was not for
the purpose of temporarily removing the person so they could return in an
improved state, although theoretically a transported person could “do their
time” in the colony and, if they had the means, return to their homeland. In
fact, transportation was a straightforward means of getting rid of “social
garbage,” even while producing ever greater supplies on home soil. The
modern prison system, from its beginnings to now, has replicated these contradictions.
Prior to the development of separate women’s institutions, women were
confined in cramped quarters within men’s prisons. Convicted primarily of

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drunkenness, theft and prostitution, they were literally hidden away, under
cold, abominable conditions including infestations of insects and rodents,
filth, inadequate nutrition, disease, total idleness or meaningless labour, harsh
punishments for prison infractions, and sexual abuses by male guards and male
prisoners. In Canada, female prisoners were kept in the attic of the men’s penitentiary in Kingston, Ontario, disdained as lazy and a disgrace to their sex
(Calder, 1981: 308–9; Cooper, 1987: 131–33; Morris, 1987: 105). They were
not, however, perceived as irredeemable, and together with the men they were
put to work on their souls.
The warden . . . read evening prayers to the convicts while in their cells, and on the
Sabbath days have read to them a sermon, with prayers and portions of the Scripture. Morning prayers, and a chapter in the Bible, are daily read in the prison after
the breakfast hour by the Deputy Warden. (Beattie, 1977: 115)

In 1836 an inspector observed that “the sentencing of females to the Penitentiary causes some inconvenience,” and that same year a matron was hired to
oversee them. As a result of the new arrangement, the women became productive:
“their labours have been beneficially applied in making and mending the bedding and clothing required for the [male] prisoners” (Ibid.: 106, 116–17).
However, all was not well, and in 1849 the warden was charged with failure to rid
the women’s cells of bugs, neglecting their “moral condition,” cruel discipline
(including flogging), sixteen charges of “starving” the women, and one charge of
driving a woman to insanity with “excessive punishment” (Ibid.: 152–54).
Separate prisons were established out of reformist recognition that male
and female prisoners could not be effectively controlled within the same institution and with the same staff, and out of the belief that the relatively few
females who go astray could be reformed under proper matronly supervision,
hard work and Christian influence (Freedman, 1981; Strange, 1985). The first
female-only prisons were developed in early-Victorian England simultaneous
with construction in the US of separate buildings for women on the grounds
of male institutions. The first entirely separate North American reformatory
for females, in the state of Indiana, became fully operational in 1874. Contrary to the reformists’ ideal it was not built on the cottage model but rather
was a “grim, dark, ‘bastille-like’ structure” in keeping with the penitentiary
model, and initially men remained in charge of female prisoners (Rafter, 1985:
33; Freedman, 1981: 46, 70–71).

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In 1879, the first separate prison for women in Canada was opened in
Toronto, the provincial Andrew Mercer Ontario Reformatory for Females,
which was likewise a fortress-like institution where, under the supervision of
an all-female staff, young women did the laundry for male prisoners, the staff
and men working on the Canadian Pacific Railway (Strange, 1985: 89). One
particularly “uplifting” matron, who described herself as “a mother to all the
girls at the Mercer,” organized a “Clean Speech Society,” which Carolyn
Strange describes as “a kind of swearers’ anonymous for women with foul
mouths. She held weekly meetings and allowed members in good standing to
wear a ‘clean speech’ button” (Strange, 1985–86: 14). “Good girls” could earn
points toward early release. A “defiant” woman was one who chewed gum.
The best-behaved prisoners earned the privilege of serving the matron (a.k.a.
superintendent) as her personal maids (Ibid.).
The cross-oceanic interest in the female reformatory model which grew
through the 19th century was stimulated by Elizabeth Fry, of Scotland and
England, an early advocate for “fallen” women who, in her view, needed to be
tamed and domesticated. Above all, Fry wanted these women to learn feminine manners. Her rules for the women in London’s Newgate prison forbade
“‘begging, swearing, gaming, card playing or immoral conversation’ in an
attempt to gain some control over ‘the ferocious manners and expression of
the women towards each other and their abandoned wickedness’” (Forsythe,
1987: 19). Whereas some female convicts were seen as victims of circumstance, pathetic creatures who had been misled, the rowdier women were seen
as depraved and “a grotesque perversion of the ideal of feminine chastity,
honour, wifely obedience and motherly love” (Ibid.: 128–29). The elusive
ideal of the prim, sober middle-class woman was set by reformers as the goal
for all destitute, criminalized women.
Although 19th century feminists were concerned more with changing
society than changing women fallen from grace, Fry’s recommendations for
separate prisons were championed by most early North American prison
reformers. In the United States and Canada, as in Britain, female prisoners were
to be given moral and religious training, taught literacy and domestic skills,
and instructed in personal hygiene and femininity. Although US reformers
advocated family-style prisons, they did not challenge the strict authoritarianism of prisons, boasting that “Obedience is the first lesson taught each
woman” (Freedman, 1981: 97). Women who didn’t learn this lesson were physically abused; female staff, who lived in the prison and worked twelve-hour days

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for very low wages, were no kinder than their male counterparts, and their
brutal treatment provoked prisoner uprisings (Rafter, 1985: 75, 77–79).
Women incarcerated in these early prisons were generally perceived as
sexual miscreants, thus the ostensible purpose of early women’s prisons was to
reform the women by training them to serve a family as a proper wife and
mother. The social construction of gender was a key factor in the conceptualization of women’s reformatories, even though women’s prisons were actually
constructed on a male, militaristic penitentiary model in which, like men,
women often worked either in solitary confinement or in silence on assembly
lines in industrial factory-model prisons. As documented by Nicole Rafter
(1982, 1985), a few institutions in the United States were actually constructed
from a reformatory “open-cottage” design, and this model did introduce new
ways of thinking about the potential uses of carceral punishments. However,
women convicted of serious crime, and women who, because of their
dependent class position and/or racial identity, did not seem redeemable (or
worthy of redemption), continued to be placed in conventionally harsh, maximum security institutions, including work camps and industrial farms.
Even the so-called reformatories, according to Estelle Freedman, “increasingly housed those women perceived by the society as the most dangerous,
not the most hopeful, cases” (Freedman, 1981: 148). Subsequent attempts to
soften or “feminize” female institutions have been consistently subordinate to
the issues of custody, order, management, discipline and punishment, which
are the fundamental functions of all prisons. The 19th century women perceived as most needful of this discipline, whether in Canada, the United
States, or the United Kingdom, were women who didn’t conform to gendered
ideals, and these women were invariably poor or working class. Dobash et al.
suggest that one reason for the significantly greater percentage of women in
prison in Scotland than in England was that greater percentages of Scottish
women were working in mills and factories, and therefore “lived more independent lives” and had more contact with police than English women, who
worked primarily in more protected domestic service (Dobash, Dobash and
Gutteridge, 1986: 93–94).
Foreign observers helped to construct the myth of humane North American alternatives to the penitentiary for female felons. For example, in the
1930s a Dutch legal reformer speaks of a Connecticut prison farm as if she
were describing a health spa—“attractive” in its rural, lakeside setting with
“abundant opportunity for healthy outdoor sports” (Lekkerkerker, 1931: 121).

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In keeping with the tendency of “officials” to be enamoured of their ideals,
and ignorant of the experiential reality of those subjected to penal disciplines,
a British penal administrator earlier declared that the (almost non-existent)
US female “cottage” reformatory model
is teaching the world that a woman’s prison is an anomaly, that it is unnecessary and
misplaced. If she is to learn a lesson, she can do so in the home life of a cottage more
readily than in an amorphous mass behind a wall too high for low skirts. (Morris,
1987: 108)

The history of prisons is the history of failed prison reform. Canada’s
prisons have been scrutinized and inspected with regularity by many commissions and task forces, at least thirteen of which have conducted
investigations of the federal Prison for Women in Kingston. It is remarkable
that the Archambault report, released in 1938, recommended the closure of
this women’s prison in the very same year in which it was fully opened for
business. The committee recognized that a centralized institution, designed
according to the same surveillance principles applied to 19th century male
prison architecture, was not appropriate to females. To radical reformists,
tiered rows of cells (each approximately six feet by nine feet) and other features of spartan, militaristic industrial prisons were seen as brutally ineffective
for men, as well.
In the U.S.A., from the 1930s to the 1960s, women were commonly
racially segregated in either completely separate institutions or on the same
grounds. “Negro” women, as a rule, received the harsher treatment, especially
in the south, where they worked on chain gangs and in hot fields under brutal
masters, in perpetuations of slave traditions. Women of the “favoured race”
who were perceived as redeemable were sent out to work as indentured servants under the influence of “good” families. As late as the 1950s, as told to me
by a woman who experienced it at the infamous Julia Tutwiler prison in Alabama, when a “Negro” woman and a white woman crossed the colour barrier
and formed a close friendship, they were sent to segregated “dungeons” as punishment for “mixing the races.”
In California, women were housed with men at San Quentin, in the San
Francisco Bay Area, until 1936, when they were moved south to Tehachapi,
into what became one of the state’s first “correctional” institutions, but which
was destroyed by an earthquake in 1952. The women were then moved further

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south to the present site at Frontera, sixty miles east of Los Angeles, in what
is known as “Corrections Valley” due to the proliferation of male, youth,
female and co-ed institutions in easy proximity to one another, a peculiar network of last resorts with all roads leading to prison. The California Institution
for Women (CIW) is situated on seventy-five acres of reclaimed riverbottom
land, a cluster of low buildings in the heart of dairy farm country and grazing
land. In the summer the temperatures soar beyond 110 degrees Fahrenheit,
the heat unpleasantly exacerbated by the dense smog that settles over the valley
and by the foul stench of hot manure that permeates the atmosphere.
California is one of the most carceral jurisdictions in the world, and CIW
has been the world’s largest prison for women for most of its history. Between
the early 1970s and the mid-1980s, during which time indeterminate sentencing was (at least theoretically) replaced with fixed terms, the population of
this prison grew from just over 600 to, at one point, almost 2,500 women,
with double-bunking and “extra bodies” housed in laundry rooms, the gymnasium, store rooms and every conceivable space, including corridors.
In 1972, the superintendent of the California prison expressed satisfaction
with what she perceived to be the progressive steps she had taken to improve
the atmosphere of her institution. She spoke of the efforts to beautify what
was called “the campus” with fresh paint and landscaping; she identified the
new programs she and her staff had introduced; and she expressed a commitment to replacing retiring staff with younger “correctional officers” who,
she hoped, could be friends and counselors to the women, as well as being
their guards. It disturbed her, however, that, given all these efforts at improvement, so many women were still trying to escape: nine women, of a total then
exceeding 600, had managed to “go over the fence” within a period of less
than two months. In keeping with an increased statewide security trend, and
as a result of the number of escapes, coiled razor wire was placed atop the
high, double chain-link fences that surrounded the institution, laser beams
were installed, and four armed guard towers were constructed, buttressed by
armed guards in a vehicle circling the perimeter of the prison grounds. By
now California “correctional” authorities have altogether abandoned the pretense of providing a “rehabilitative” environment: prisons are strictly for
punishment.
From the point of view of most people who are locked up, there is no such
thing as a good prison. As succinctly stated by Gayle Horii, with the authority
gained from seven years inside:

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Ours is a cloistered world, one where every minute of our day and night is calculated
and where we are forced to conform to inane rules and regulations; one where we
are counted over and over and over again, keys smashing our senses as doors crash
behind us locking us in coffin-like cages and cells. (1992: i)

Conflicting perceptions of incarceration according to point of view is an
old story, as old as the first prison. Women’s prison reformers create what they
think is a model institution which will at the very least give women a dignified
environment in which to serve their prison sentence, and which will at best
reform their character. But most prisoners are not asking to be reformed, and
are tormented by what they experience as hell holes, whether the furniture,
walls and floors are decayed and coated with grime, or brand new and freshly
painted and carpeted in “soothing” pastel colours. For a century, the ghosts of
disgruntled and despairing women have been climbing the walls of both
besoiled and pastel prisons.
Listen, the halls are not wide enough
I can touch each side
with my arm outstretched
I tell you there is not enough air in here
Not enough air.
(Sin, in Miller, 1974: 3)

CO-ED PRISONS
What effect would women have in our institutions? They would help normalize a
fairly abnormal situation, helping to create a more realistic environment. They
would also help to reduce tension, lower the level of aggression and improve the
hygiene, language and self-image of inmates. (Correctional Service Canada, 1977)

The first prisons in which women were incarcerated were “co-ed” prisons
insofar as the few female prisoners were held in “special” sections of male institutions. For example, Helen Gibson writes of the first state prison in
Wisconsin, which in 1904 held 566 men and 11 women (Gibson, 1976: 96).
This was characteristic of North American prisons, and it was because women
were neglected and abused in these prisons that the female reformatory move-

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ment gained momentum. In the late 20th century, a number of Western jurisdictions have experimented with a return to “co-ed” prisons with the rationales
that it is unnatural to separate the sexes, and that females have a positive influence on the language, hygiene and appearance of male prisoners. Not
incidentally, identical arguments have been put forth to justify “affirmative
action” policies of hiring women as “correctional officers” in male prisons
(Nicholson, 1985). In Canada this trend began in 1977 with a pilot project in
which teams of females were assigned to male institutions in Saskatchewan,
British Columbia and Quebec.
British Columbia attempted a co-ed prison in Prince George in the 1970s,
to alleviate crowding at the women’s provincial jail, the Lakeside Correctional
Facility. The experiment was discontinued due to unfavourable effects on the
females, who, as in all co-ed prisons, constituted a distinct numerical minority.
In Western societies it may be “unnatural” to segregate the sexes, but it is even
more unnatural for men and women to occupy the same space without the
occurrence of sexual intercourse, by mutual choice or otherwise. Speaking for
a 1978 Royal Commission which she chaired, Justice Proudfoot acknowledged
that men were favourably affected by the presence of women but that the
problems outweighed the benefits. In her words,
Measured against [the benefits] were disadvantages of conflicts and jealousies [8
women to 140 men at the time of the study]; sexual frustrations; intensified emotional depression; the detrimental effects of jail romances on outside life; and
inmate-guard romances. The advantages [to co-corrections] seem superficial and
are, in the view of the Commission, heavily outweighed by the disadvantages.
(Liaison, 1979: 7)

This view matches my impressions of a US federal co-ed prison in northern
California, the Pleasanton “correctional” facility. Many of the women incarcerated there actively pursued romantic friendships with male prisoners, but
other women were discomfited by the intense gendered dynamics of the institution. And whereas staff commonly observed that the presence of women
had a “civilizing” effect on the male prisoners, others observed that sexual tensions and jealousies exacerbated the normal stresses of the prison environment
for both males and females.
In the context of Hawaii, as reported by Clarice Feinman, “the 1982 experiment [with co-ed prisons] failed because women prisoners were harassed by

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male officers and the fear of sexual contact between male and female prisoners
led to tighter restrictions and controls for the women” (Feinman, 1985: 31).
The frequent occurrences of pregnancy has also caused institutional problems
which outweigh the perceived “normalizing” advantages of co-ed prisons. It is
telling, in terms of persistent heterosexist presumptions of appropriate gender
roles, that advocates of co-ed prisons laud their “normalizing” effects, although
Alice Propper observed in 1979 that in mixed youth facilities “homosexual”
liaisons between girls were as common as they were in segregated institutions
(Liaison, 1979: 24).
Despite the bad reports, “co-ed” prisons continue to exist in those jurisdictions in the US and Canada where there are too few women to justify the
cost of building separate prisons. In the Yukon Territory the few female prisoners are housed in a section of the male institution. (When I visited there in
1984, all the women were Native, about ten of them, although Natives constitute only about 15 percent of the total Yukon population.) In the Northwest
Territories, a 1985 Task Force concerned with incarceration of about fifteen
women believed that, due to what was perceived as greater program opportunities in mixed institutions, co-ed prisons could be the most effective answer
to the vocational needs of “women in conflict with the law” (DHSS, 1985: 4).
However, given that prisons of any size are rarely well-equipped to prepare
either men or women for integration in the outside work force, this too is a
dubious expectation.
Not unexpectedly, many female prisoners who have never experienced coed prisons believe they would prefer to be incarcerated with men (Shaw et al.,
Survey, 1990: 64). However, those with experience point out that women
imprisoned with men are doubly exploited as sexual objects and as nurturers.
Generally, among critics, there is agreement that co-ed prisons only serve to
perpetuate male dominance of dependent women, and that the goal of
offering more vocational options to incarcerated women is better met by
having the women “commute” to male prisons to participate in their programs, as has been practiced at Canada’s Prison for Women since the
mid-1980s.
Officials in the United States continue to vacillate as to the viability of coed institutions. Allison Morris notes that in the United States in the
mid-1970s “there were over 20 co-correctional state and federal institutions,”
but that by the mid-1980s over half had reverted to segregated institutions
(1987: 128). However, Rita Simon and Jean Landis counter that “As of 1989,

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there were nineteen coed prisons in the state system located in eleven states
and seven coed institutions in the federal system” (1991: 88), for a total of
twenty-six prisons intentionally designed to tame men with women’s feminine influence.

PRISON PLACEMENTS:
CANADA AND THE U.S.A.
There is a difference in the way prisoners are divided in Canada and the
U.S.A. according to federal or provincial/state distinctions. In Canada, a
federal prisoner is anyone whose crime warrants a sentence greater than two
years; women with sentences of less than two years are held in the provincial
system. In the United States, apart from short-term city/town jails for “peace
disturbants” and those who commit other minor offences, there are three
tiers of incarceration: county jails, for sentences of one year or less; state
prisons; and federal prisons. Only those crimes specific to exclusively federal law (such as treason) or which involve crossing state lines (as, for
example, with drug trafficking, kidnapping or stolen vehicles) constitute federal offences. Women who commit state offences with penalties of greater
than one year go to state prison. Thus, both state and federal prisoners serve
long sentences, up to life, or indeed, in those states with the option of capital punishment, may be executed.
As of 1990, women constitute less than 3 percent of all federal Canadian
prisoners, with sentences of two years to life, and on average women constitute
approximately 4 percent of provincial prisoners. As of June 1990, 305 women
were serving federal sentences compared to 13,234 men (Statistics Canada,
1990: 1). Additionally, several thousand women went in and out of provincial jails. At any given time, approximately twenty-five women in Canada are
serving life sentences, and for half a century most of these women have been
housed at the Prison for Women in Kingston. In the much more punitive
United States, where the population is only approximately ten times greater
than in Canada, there were 580,000 people serving state or federal sentences
for “serious” offences in 1987, of whom approximately 29,000 were women
(Simon and Landis, 1991: 77).
By way of explaining the low crime and incarceration rate of women, it has
become something of a feminist cliché to say that women are controlled pri-

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vately, in the home, and men are controlled publicly, by the mechanisms of
market capitalism, the military, criminal justice and so forth. This has been a
foundational analysis, but it is incomplete when it does not take into account
social change or differences among women. Consider that almost 25 percent
of federally sentenced females in Canada are Native (self-identified and/or as
identified by the prosecuting agencies), and the provincial ratio is even higher
(Shaw et al., Survey, 1990: 4), even though officially registered Indians constitute less than 4 percent of the Canadian population (INAC, 1989:4). Like
many other women who have not been successfully confined to the home,
Native women have not been restricted to a “private sphere,” as discussed in
Chapter Four.
In the United States in 1990 there were 56 female-only state and federal
prisons, 560 prisons for men, and another 26 prisons which were co-ed
(Simon and Landis, 1991: 77). By contrast, Canada has over forty federal
prisons for men and just one federal institution for women, the Prison for
Women in Kingston, Ontario (P4W). There are, however, plans to construct
six new regional women’s prisons. This prison was built to hold federal female
prisoners from all over Canada, some separated from their families by distances of several thousand miles. Constructed across the road from the men’s
penitentiary, the grey limestone building is circled by an eighteen-feet-high
concrete wall to contain the full range of women considered to be “serious
offenders.” This includes girls still in their teens who were sexually abused as
children, started prostituting in early adolescence and got involved in minor
drug trafficking; young mothers with chronic records of theft; and older
women who killed abusive spouses. In recent years, of the up to approximately
300 women in Canada serving prison sentences of two years or more, approximately half have been incarcerated at P4W, with the balance serving time in
the provinces under Exchange of Services agreements.

FEDERAL PRISON FOR WOMEN
IN CANADA, A.K.A. P4W
At P4Wm, a guard sitting in a wire cage just inside the prison checks the credentials of everyone seeking entry, and on the other side of a metal detector is
a maze of staff offices, stairwells, long corridors with stained walls and shiny
linoleum-tile floors which lead to and run past the tiny, barred cells in the

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tiered “range” units, a separate section of dorm-like rooms in the “wing” (to
which well-behaved women can graduate after several months), a cafeteria, the
isolated segregation and hospital areas, and rooms, upstairs and down, for the
limited work, school, recreational, counselling and health programs and services. Between 100 and 150 women will be there for at least two years and often
for ten or more, all of them physically and psychologically constrained by life
in their prison. In its fifty-five-year history (as of 1993) P4W has had just six
wardens, and despite the traditional rhetoric supporting female staff for female
prisoners, only two of them have been women.
The issue of centralization has been raised by each of the thirteen reports
commissioned by the government since the opening of P4W. The federal government has had dozens of male institutions throughout the country to
accommodate prisoners’ proximity to family members, to facilitate management of particular offender populations, to accommodate differential custody
classifications (minimum, medium and maximum security), and to allow for
various kinds of vocational, educational or therapeutic programming. It is a
futile and foolish exercise to suggest that women would do better if they were
granted a range of “choices” equivalent to those offered to men in the system.
Men’s prisons are no more constructive experientially or in outcome than
women’s prisons; programs in men’s institutions do not represent real choices
for men, and have not proven of any particular use in terms of so-called rehabilitation or post-prison employment. Nevertheless, differences among men
are at least theoretically taken into account, whereas women are blatantly
denied any recognition as individuals with distinct identities and needs.
At P4W, all prisoners are subject to maximum security custody even though
prison officials agree that less than 15 percent of approximately 150 women
require surveillance in the interests of public safety (Elliott and Morris, 1987:
150). Given the small numbers of women, a commensurate budget, and the
constraints of the physical layout, programs are necessarily limited. This combination of high level security, great distance from families and communities,
and few choices for daily activity or movement, together with individual reasons for despair, results in lethargy, claustrophobia, depression, self-injurious
behaviour and suicide. From informal tallies it seems that at least twelve
women killed themselves at P4W between 1977 and 1991, of whom eight were
Native women. Exact statistics are unavailable in part because authorities are
reluctant to have suicides blamed on the institution, and they stress that
women come in with suicidal tendencies and might well have killed them-

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selves whether or not they had been in the institution. Given the conditions
of incarceration, however, one must deduce that women “on the edge” are
pushed over by the prison experience.
Seven commissioned reports on P4W were submitted to the federal government in less than a decade, between 1969 and 1978, each of them
repeating the time-worn recommendation for the institution to be closed and
replaced by small regional facilities. The 1978 report was by the Joint Committee to Study the Alternatives for Housing of the Federal Female Offender,
appointed by the Federal Commissioner of Corrections. On the basis of this
report, which underscored the recommendations of those that preceded it, in
1979 then-Solicitor General of Canada, Jean-Jacques Blais, prematurely
announced at an International Symposium on the Female Offender, in Vancouver, that the Kingston Prison for Women would be phased out (Liaison,
1979: 2–5).
Through the 1980s, many women sentenced to a federal term were
retained in their home provinces, generally approximately 100 women of a
total of 250 federal female prisoners. Through a federal-provincial Exchange
of Services agreement which went into effect in the mid-1970s, the
provinces hold the women in provincial jail facilities. For example, francophone women constitute more than one-fifth of federal female prisoners,
and more than half of these have been held in Quebec at the Maison de Tanguay, under this agreement. In this way, P4W has gradually been dispersing
federally sentenced women back to the provinces. However, contrary to the
Honourable Jean-Jacques Blais’s promise, P4W was not dismantled. In 1981
the Canadian Human Rights Commission ruled that P4W was discriminatory against women, given that it lacked the services and programs available
in men’s institutions. This resulted in minimal cosmetic and program
improvements at the institution and the construction of a “little house” on
the grounds for family visits, but little substantive change in the day-to-day
prison operations.

CREATING CHOICES: BEYOND P4W
Through the history of P4W, one government report after another recommended that the institution be closed and replaced with regional centres. On
April 19, 1990, yet another report on P4W was released. Titled Creating

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Choices, it was produced by the Task Force on Federally Sentenced Women, a
joint venture of a number of government agencies and national organizations
including the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies and the Native
Women’s Association of Canada (TFFSW, 1990). In September 1990, on the
recommendations of this report, Commissioner Ole Ingstrup announced that
immediate changes would be made at the institution, regional institutions
would be built, the phase-out of P4W would commence as soon as possible,
and the institution would be closed by 1994.
In her summary of this latest report, Kelly Moffat notes that what made
this new study different from those that preceded it was that “The research
completed for the Task Force was driven by a ‘women-centreed approach’ and
its representatives were from women’s groups and others ‘whose beliefs stressed
that issues such as poverty, racism, wife battering, and sexual abuse are central
to women’s crime’” (Moffat, 1991: 193). This report was thorough in its condemnation of existing “correctional” services for women. The members of the
task force toured Canada and talked to 84 percent of all federally incarcerated
females, including those held in the provinces under the Exchange of Services
agreement as well as those imprisoned at P4W. Native women did research
with Native women, and women in the institution had considerable input, to
ensure that the views of the task force were informed by the experiences of
prisoners as well as the views of authorities and reform-minded citizens. On
the strength of the report, the government made a commitment to alter the
face of “female corrections” in Canada.
As discovered by Shaw et al. (Survey, 1990: 62), not all women wished to
see P4W closed down. When the decision was made, reformers received news
of the impending closure with satisfaction, as did many women incarcerated
at P4W. Others at P4W, however, have been distressed at the decision. Some
women prefer to do their time away from their communities, and find prison
visits more unsettling than helpful. Others, especially lifers, have formed a
familiar community within the old prison, and are accustomed to one another
and to the routines of the institution. Women who are reluctant to be transferred to the home provinces also resist dual mode prisons (merging of federal
and provincial), protesting that provincial regulations are significantly more
constraining than those at the federal level. It is feared too that given the
smaller numbers in regional centres and the transiency of provincially sentenced women, even fewer programs would be available in the provinces than
at P4W.

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Repeating the recommendations of preceding reports, the 1990 task force
proposed small, home-like residences in easy proximity to family and home
communities. Emphasis is given to the need for special programs that facilitate
mothers’ involvements with their children. Given that most women in prison
represent no risk to the community, there is no need for an hierarchical,
authoritarian, punitive, paramilitary, security-driven staffing model. Women
could benefit from self-help cooperative models, and if the report is heeded,
staff must be sensitized to cultural differences and needs. In Canada this is
especially relevant for Native women, women of African heritage from Nova
Scotia, the United States or the Caribbean, and French-language women. For
example, almost half of French-speaking female prisoners have been incarcerated outside Quebec, and thus have no access to services in French.
Members of the 1990 task force emphasized the potential role of the community in responding to the social problems that produce crime and criminal
offenders. A de-emphasis on institutionalized programming, more individual
needs assessment and planning, and full use of community resources could
have a positive effect on many women’s lives. Vocational training, education,
mental and physical health care, and cultural and spiritual communion can
all be much better attained outside rather than inside prison. Thus, the proposed function of prison staff would be to facilitate a woman’s access to real
choices for skill and personal development, as opposed to serving dead time in
a punitive and barren prison environment.
The lack of consensus among the women affected is the first problem in
closing P4W. A second concern, of proponents of the closure, is whether the
recommendations of the task force for “woman-friendly” environments will
be actually implemented in the regional institutions. A Healing Lodge for
Native women is to be located in Maple Creek, Saskatchewan; as of late 1993,
it is still unclear when this facility will be developed and how staffing decisions will be made. Conversations with residents of Maple Creek suggest that
there is little support for this initiative, and that even at the early planning
stages the proposed facility has generated what can only be interpreted as a
racist response.
In addition to the Healing Lodge, five new regional prisons are to be constructed. The first of these regional prisons is a dual mode facility in British
Columbia which holds both federally and provincially sentenced women, as discussed in the section “A Brand New Prison.” Opened in 1991 in an isolated
semi-rural setting, this institution contradicts the task force recommendations

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both architecturally and in its isolation from community resources, even though
many of the administrators and staff are endeavouring to implement policies
and programs more conducive to healing and growth than to punishment.
A second new federal women’s prison, at the proposal stage, is to be located
on the Griesbach military base in Edmonton, Alberta. In Quebec, the Maison
de Tanguay is to be replaced with a new institution in Joliette, and a fourth
women’s prison is to be located in Kitchener, Ontario. Finally, the last of the
regional institutions is to be constructed in Truro, Nova Scotia, for women in
the Maritimes. In the view of writer and long-term prisoner Jo-Ann Mayhew,
the selection of this location is straightforward political patronage. It will provide job opportunities in a depressed Canadian region, but the area is
ill-equipped to respond to the needs of incarcerated women: “. . . it is highly
unlikely that a community the size of Truro—which by its own submission is
sorely lacking in women-centreed programming and almost totally unfamiliar
with the issues facing imprisoned women—will be able to do more than provide a warehouse for us” (Mayhew, 1992: 15). Supporters of the new prisons
stress economic benefits in terms of new jobs and profits to the regions. Opponents, such as a group in Kitchener calling themselves “People Protecting
Children and Homes,” stress the drop of housing value in areas in which new
prisons are situated, and they also misguidedly argue that women’s prisons
present dangers to themselves and their children.
The 1990 task force appointed by Correctional Service Canada learned that
90 percent of Aboriginal women and 61 percent of all other women at the
Prison for Women during the term of the study had histories of sexual and
physical abuse, a point reiterated by more recent Canadian studies of female
incarceration (see, for example, Tien et al., 1993). Relatedly, 69 percent
reported having been addicted to alcohol and/or illegal drugs, a problem
which can be perpetuated by the commonplace uses of prescription drugs
within institutions (Shaw, 1982: 264–65), as well as by women’s initiatives in
gaining access to illegal drugs from outside. In her study of Cornton Vale, the
women’s prison in Scotland, Pat Carlen was told by prison officers that “all
the short-term recidivists had a drink problem” (1983: 157), and this most
common of pre-prison addictions is manifest in illegal prison activities. In
most female institutions, women manage to make homebrew concoctions in
their cells which may not taste very good but which bring on the desired effect
of ameliorating the stress of incarceration.
The need for counselling and recovery programs relative to sexual abuse, and

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alcohol addiction, far exceeds the services which institutions can provide,
although as Carlen observes in the Scottish context: “Prison officers can justifiably claim that they are the only ones who do anything for the alcoholic women
whom nobody else wants” (1983: 172). Given the social dimensions of these
problems, community-based services would be critical to any healing process.
However, the neighbouring communities of most of the proposed locations of
new regional prisons in Canada are unprepared to provide these services.
Kelly Moffat emphasizes that the problems of geographic dislocation
cannot be solved by five new regional institutions in the geographically largest
country in the world. Most incarcerated women will still not be within visiting proximity to their families. This will particularly affect Native women if
they are all sent (by choice or order) to the one Healing Lodge. Also, women
will continue to be subject to unreasonable security restrictions, given that
women with a minimum custody classification will be housed in institutions
designed for women assigned to maximum custody. An even more serious
reason identified by Moffat for skepticism about this new plan is that instead
of challenging the notion of incarceration as a reasonable response to the
crimes of most female “offenders,” the new regional institutions will instead
reinforce the legitimacy of prisons, and with many more available “beds” will
almost certainly result in an increase rather than a reduction in the numbers
of women incarcerated (Moffat, 1991: 196–97).
Immediate improvements implemented by Correctional Service Canada
following from the task force report included the following: elimination of
transfers of women from the provinces to the Prison for Women; recruitment
of an Aboriginal elder to meet on a daily basis with Native women and to facilitate sweetgrass and sweatlodge ceremonies; reduction of the policy of placing
self-injurious women in solitary confinement; increased paid telephone calls to
families from one to two a month; increased efforts to facilitate prisoners’
attendance at family funerals; installation of lighting in the exercise yard so it
could be used in the evening, and provide more opportunity for fresh air
(Ibid.: 8–9). These would seem to be very elementary changes in correctional
policy, rather than evidence of substantive and transformative change.
Just prior to the release of the task force report, the Solicitor General
opened a new minimum security institution for federally sentenced women
in Kingston, situated in a renovated house located across the street from the
massive Prison for Women. Accommodating eleven women, the “Minimum
House” offers a model for the kind of “homelike atmosphere” recommended

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by the task force, with the women working cooperatively in the house,
working at jobs outside, and participating in programs in the community. As
warden Mary Cassidy observed, “The women are more relaxed and there are
fewer real or perceived medical problems. That adjustment of the women has
been really rewarding . . . I really believe environment changes behaviour. This
was a positive move and will have a positive effect on the women’s development” (Golligher, 1990: 8). Despite the public relations tone of this
pronouncement, perhaps some correctional officials are beginning to recognize in some small measure the futility of lock-up facilities for women who
are in trouble with the law.
To the extent that the regional replacements for P4W are simply new prisons,
rather than genuine alternatives, the problems that have characterized P4W will
be compounded five-fold. Five prisons for women cannot be perceived as an
advance over one centralized institution. To underscore Moffat’s arguments, and
as the history of prisons has demonstrated, if institutions are available judges
send people to them, and with increased beds the likelihood is that more women
will be imprisoned for lesser offences than is currently the case. And when those
beds are filled, advocates of carceral “solutions” will propose the construction of
yet more women’s facilities. Nothing short of a radical readjustment in “correctional” thinking will break this cycle, and the underlying problems of female
“offenders” will remain unaddressed except on the most superficial levels.

A BRAND NEW PRISON
Simultaneous with the research activity of the 1990s Task Force which concluded that P4W should be closed and replaced with small regional facilities,
the province of British Columbia was preparing to close the Lakeside Correctional Facility for Women. This decrepit and antiquated institution, situated
on the grounds of and adjacent to the Oakalla men’s prison, was to be replaced
with a new provincial female institution on a semi-rural Burnaby site. In an
agreement between the federal and provincial authorities, it was decided that
the new Burnaby Correctional Centre for Women (BCCW) would confine
women from both jurisdictions and that it would serve as the first of the
planned regional prisons for federally sentenced women.
This new institution is an innovative blend of 19th century prison architecture and 21st century advanced technology. Most of the women are

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serving short-term sentences and would qualify for minimum security if that
were an institutional option. Technically, the institution is a medium security facility, but for all practical purposes, due to the architectural design and
high-level technological security systems, and because women from every
classification are locked up together, they must all abide by the maximum
custody rules intended for the control of the few women who are perceived
as security risks. The immense rotunda at the centre of the prison recalls and
structurally manifests the Panopticon design, conceived by the English utilitarian prison reformer Jeremy Bentham in 1787 as the ideal architectural
design for (male) penitentiaries or, for that matter, schools or factories. Bentham’s historic model, based on the concept of a full view of everything in
the plane of vision, fascinated Michel Foucault (1979) as a metaphor for
modern, strategic social control of unruly bodies, with a guard tower situated
in the centre of tiered individual cells in a circular, rotunda arrangement. In
this “laboratory of power,” as Foucault put it, the cells are lighted so as to
ensure that the guard can at any time look into the cell of any prisoner, and
the prisoner can see no one. Aware of the possibility of being observed at any
moment, prisoners internalize the surveillance and each becomes their own
best guard. The guard is likewise supervised and watched by an actual or symbolic superior authority in an anonymous “uninterrupted play of calculated
gazes” (Foucault, 1984: 193).
In the very moment that surveillance is internalized by the person being
watched, the system has accomplished its purpose; behaviours are accordingly
circumscribed and thereby normalized under the authority of dominant discourses and entrenched power relations. Within the frameworks of gender
construction and modern practices of femininity, this process signifies ways
by which females are taught to be acquiescent and obeisant. It is telling, in
this light, that male prisoners complain of being “treated like a woman” (Faith,
1993: 34), just as women in prison complain of being treated like children.
Through what Foucault calls “the infinitely minute web of panoptic techniques” (1984: 213), human beings throughout modern, western societies are
examined, classified, watched, disciplined and “normalized.” With the complement of advanced technologies, the new Burnaby women’s prison is an
ideal set-up for this process.
In Bentham’s model the guards look directly into each cell. The postmodern Burnaby “correctional centre” relies on 114 strategically placed
cameras which are monitored through a “Central Control” unit at the heart of

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the rotunda; within this unit the pictures captured by the gaze of the cameras
are viewed on banks of television monitors. The surveillance extends through
narrow hallways in a spoke pattern leading to six Living Units, each of which
has a “common feeding area” in the centre of sixteen or seventeen individual
cells. Two smaller units are reserved as “dissociation” or Special Handling Units
(super-maximum security) for women on “administrative,” “protective” or
“closed” custody. Old-fashioned keys are replaced with electronic devices: to
enter into or to exit from any of the hallways, or any other part of the institution, one must be screened by video and audio communication with the
officers in Central Control, who monitor and control all comings and goings.
Cameras are positioned on the outside of buildings and around the
periphery of the prison compound as well as throughout the inside of the
building. In addition, high stone walls enclose the tiny “court yards” in which
women (and their visitors) can sit outside when the weather is mild. When
women breach prison rules and are punished with segregation from the main
prison population, or if in the opinion of the staff they are suicide risks or otherwise require “medical observation,” they are placed in solitary confinement
in top security “strip” cells in isolated locations, where total twenty-four-hour
a day surveillance is achieved by both cameras and the direct and constant gaze
of guards who sit behind protective glass.
All these elaborate security networks and devices are buttressed by chain
link fences, and the total effect is that of an electronic fortress. The institution
itself is situated in the countryside at the far edge of a stretch of flatland, four
kilometres from the nearest bus stop, with the Fraser River running alongside
the front of the buildings. It has been the tradition in North America to situate “reformatories” in what is euphemistically described as a “pastoral
setting,” which is in fact an isolation imposed by the accurate assumption that
people do not wish to have prisons in their neighbourhoods. Given that surrounding communities have expanded through urban and suburban spread,
many formerly rural prisons now have housing tracts, manufacturing or business districts in their neighbourhood, but new prisons are still constructed in
the boondocks.
The impression imparted by the new Burnaby prison is that this highly
secure institution has been constructed for the precise purpose of protecting
“the public” from dangerous, unruly criminals, when in reality very few of the
women who are sent here represent any threat at all to anyone. Most do not
have violence on their records, and women who “act out” within the institu-

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tion are put in lock-up and/or calmed with prescribed sedatives or tranquilizers. Thus, the effective function of this phenomenal security system is
fundamentally ideological without any perceptible practical justification. As
reported to me in 1992 by a chief administrator, it cost Can. $37 million (in
1990) to construct this institution to house up to 120 women, with a Can.
$5 million annual prison budget (provincially/federally shared). This averages
out to an expense of $65,000 per annum per prisoner. (In contrast, given the
much greater numbers of male prisoners, it costs $46.000 per annum per male
prisoner.) The mind boggles at the thought of what one woman could do to
improve her life circumstances with $65,000 a year.
Among the provincially employed staff and administrators of this physically intimidating institution are more well-informed and progressive
individuals than I’ve encountered in any other prison. This is particularly true
of people contracted for special programs and services, but it also applies to
administrators and regular custody staff. In part this move toward less discipline and more practical understanding reflects trends toward more open
penal philosophies on the part of provincial “correctional” directors. While
the prison staff are generally “professional” and conventional in the sense that
their first concern is custody and enforcement of the sometimes incomprehensibly petty rules, I have observed an uncommon degree of respect between
many of these individuals (both old-timers who transferred from the old
prison and new, younger staff ) and the women under their charge. They
express empathy for the women’s circumstances, they recognize that these
women are not for the most part “dangerous criminals,” they go out of their
way to facilitate the women’s needs both while they’re locked up and in preparation for release, and in other ways demonstrate a commitment to the women
which goes well beyond the call of duty.
Increasingly, newly hired staff have attended college or university, which
does not in itself guarantee effectiveness but which does suggest that they have
chosen to do this work rather than having been tracked into it for lack of
options. A number of them identify themselves as feminists and are active in
local women’s communities, and some of the most effective and respected staff
are non-closeted lesbians. The vast majority of the staff and administration are
female, but most of the males on staff, such as a particularly insightful and
good-humoured chef, and the coordinator of the expansive gardening project,
have similarly earned the women’s respect by recognizing their needs and
worth as human beings.

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The above notwithstanding, it’s important to interject the caveat that, by
my observation and in the opinions of incarcerated women I’ve interviewed,
other staff members are demonstrably committed to the imbalanced power
relations that de facto define their position within the institution. That is, they
exercise their authority without any apparent regard for the women’s feelings
and they unflinchingly punish women who are “uncooperative.” They are prejudicial and demeaning in their attitudes, and they abuse their power in ways
that compound the women’s grief. These are the classic prison guards whose
authoritarian demeanour is consistent with the ideological framework of
carceral institutions historically, and which is also consistent with the architecturally imposed security focus of the Burnaby Correctional Centre for
Women.
Since the opening of the new prison in April 1991, up to eighty women
have been incarcerated at any given time in BCCW, of whom approximately
one-third are on remand, awaiting court appearances which may or may not
result in incarcerative sentences. Public taxes are thus supporting a mammoth,
high security institution for a substantial body of women who are not even
yet officially “criminals.” In the first year of operation, about 2,000 admissions were processed, including repeaters. Apart from the women on remand,
most were serving provincial sentences averaging fourteen days at a stretch.
Next door to BCCW is a smaller unfenced building, the independently administered Open Living Unit, which is reserved for twenty-eight women with
minimum custody classification. These women are nearing the completion of
their sentences, and a number of them are released daily to go to jobs in the
“free” world.
According to a report by the B.C. Forensic Psychiatric Services Commission (Tien et al., 1993: 6–9), of the sentenced women at BCCW between May
and October 1992, three-fourths were serving provincial sentences of less than
two years and the balance were serving federal sentences exceeding two years
(including several women serving life terms.) Approximately 40 percent of the
women were of full or partial Native heritage, and most of the balance were
Canadian “Caucasians.” The women averaged thirty years in age. Almost
three-fourths had not completed high school and two-thirds were on social
assistance prior to their arrest.
According to Tien et al., at the time of arrest, 12 percent of the surveyed
women were married, 31 percent were in common-law relationships, 13 percent were divorced and 43 percent had never married. Their own family

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histories were similarly marginal to the stable nuclear family ideal. As reported
by Tien et al. (1993: 7), “Less than half of the inmates interviewed were raised
primarily by their biological parents in a stable home.” Thirty-one percent
were raised by combinations of biological parents, foster parents, relatives or
other arrangements, and 24 percent were raised entirely apart from their biological parents, including women who had been institutionalized as children.
This contemporary profile of incarcerated women is reminiscent of the
findings of Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck who, in 1934, conducted this century’s most detailed study of women in prison. Tracking the lives of 500
women incarcerated in Massachusetts, for crimes of “unlawful sexuality,
immorality and stealing, and drunkenness,” they characterized the women as
“a sorry lot” who left home (or foster homes or institutions) at an early age,
who were absorbed in “harmful pursuits,” and who did not attend church.
They note the women’s “illicit sexual indulgence” and “illegitimate pregnancies” and sum them up as a “swarm of defective, diseased, antisocial misfits”
who, in the Gluecks’ estimation, should be sterilized or kept in prison “until
they have passed the period of fertility,” given their “lack of control of their
sexual impulses” (Glueck and Glueck, 1934). The criminal justice preoccupation with female sexuality begins with youth, and Meda Chesney-Lind
pioneered the recognition that whereas boys are incarcerated for actual “criminal offences,” girls have most often been incarcerated for “ungovernability”
and incarcerated at a significantly higher rate than boys “for their own protection” (Chesney-Lind, 1978; see also Gordon, 1992).
It is generally recognized that whereas sexual abuse does not commonly
result in a “life of crime,” women who are criminalized have an even higher
ratio of abuse in their histories than the female population at large. Thus, Tien
et al. found that 47 percent of the women interviewed at the Burnaby Correctional Centre for Women had been sexually abused as children, of whom
half had been abused by family members, and the other half by combinations
of family members and outsiders. Other forms of childhood physical abuses
(such as beatings and burnings), as well as psychological abuses, were also commonplace in the women’s histories. As adults they had fared no better, having
been victims of rape, having guns pointed at them and various other traumatic
events. In their intimate adult relationships, 76 percent reported histories of
verbal abuse and 69 percent had been physically (including sexually) abused.
Five percent of the women reported that they had themselves been physically
abusive towards intimate partners, and 11 percent reported mutual abuse. Pre-

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dictably, almost half of the interviewed women had attempted suicide, and
almost a third had engaged in self-mutilation, a practice which is seriously
exacerbated by imprisonment.
Despite the efforts of many caring staff members, most women leave prison
with the same problems they had when they entered, and those problems are
often deepened by the prison experience. The initial humiliation of being
transported to the prison in handcuffs escorted by law enforcement officials,
being subjected to yet another “mug shot” and more fingerprinting, being
assigned a prison number which in effect delegates the new prisoner to “nonperson” status, having all one’s personal possessions taken away, the
degradations of the body search, being forced to bathe or shower with chemical solutions to kill (usually non-existent) body lice or other vermin, and the
series of probing interrogations by intake officers, medical personnel and the
officer in the cellblock, are all designed, even if not consciously intended, to
break a prisoner’s spirit. As discussed by Erving Goffman (1970) in his theory
of the “mortification of self ” in total institutions, and Michel Foucault (1979),
who describes institutionalization as a series of “normalization” processes, these
degrading rituals have the effect of breaking down personal identity, confirming that the state has taken ownership of the body/self, which lays the
prisoner bare for the processes of “rehabilitation.”
Sometimes late at night I cried. Nobody knew. But you’re alone, you and yourself,
and maybe you’ve had a bad day or the letter didn’t come or you want your man
there, somebody to talk to, to tell you you’re all right, you know, that you’re still a
nice person despite all this. . . . (Kirby, 1983: 17)

Prisons are small totalitarian societies, with rules and regulations affecting
every intimate detail of life. The prisoner is reduced to a number, one unit in
the vast “correctional” enterprise. Personal testimonies from prisoners produce
a jumbled accumulation of agonies:

· the stigma of incarceration;
· the claustrophobia of confinement;
· craving fresh air or the feeling of rain on the face;
· the deadly boredom;
limitations on physical movement and the aggravation of needing an
· strict
“inmate pass” to move from one part of the institution to another;

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· anxiety about one’s children (and frequently the devastation of losing
them);
loneliness
for close family members, sweethearts and community support
·
systems;
nervousness
from being under constant scrutiny and supervision;
·
· physical and emotional problems that accompany withdrawal from alcohol
and street drugs;
· lack of anyone to serve advocacy for one’s needs;
· lack of privacy and the tensions that erupt between people in “total institutions” who haven’t chosen to be confined together;
endless
line-ups;
·
· inability to get straight answers to questions;
· paranoia about breaking what seem like arbitrary, tyrannical or, at best,
coercive institutional rules;
fears
· of being punitively segregated in isolation for behavioural infractions,
·
·
·
·
·
·
·
·
·
·
·

or likewise segregated in a prison-within-the-prison for “medical observation” or “protective” or “administrative” custody;
insensitivities and abuses of power both by staff and other prisoners;
mail and phone censorship and the risk of losing these “privileges”;
lack of choice in such simple matters as when to eat, sleep or watch television;
little or no choice of diet;
weight gain;
chain-smoking as a coping mechanism;
having to be locked in one’s cell periodically throughout the day and facing
the slot in the door for routine “body counts,” to ensure no one has escaped;
the inability to escape from the cacophony of radios, television, people hollering at each other, the rattling of keys and clanging of electronic doors;
never getting a good night’s sleep because of the sounds of the prison,
including the snoring, coughing, weeping and wailing of other prisoners,
and because for security reasons it’s never fully dark, and every night a guard
flashes a light in your face. While you are sleeping;
depressions and mood swings produced by prescribed behaviour-modifying
drugs;
cognitive dissonance from not knowing how or whether to show feelings
(if you laugh too much you must be stoned on contraband drugs; if you’re
too quiet you must be depressed and in need of medicine);

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· dependency and infantilization processes that accrue when one is denied
the right to make any decision concerning one’s own life;
uncertainty
of when you will be released and the realization of very limited
·
choices in the “free” world when the time comes.

These and other conventional features of life in prison can wound the spirit or
rupture the already wounded, sometimes irreparably. However, women may
also become stronger through sheer anger and their will to survive with their
self-respect intact:
[O]ne thing prison’s taught me is to be very strong, and that I am a worthwhile
person. Nobody likes to have their freedom taken away from them, but all the abuse
and everything they threw at me—it just made me stronger each time. (Padel and
Stevenson, 1988: 193)

The clearest need of a majority of incarcerated women is for programs that
can address the effects of prior victimization. Most prisons are severely or altogether lacking such services, but BCCW is making some effort. Although the
medical doctor is available only ten hours a week, for up to 120 women, the
nursing staff offer opportunities to confront eating disorders or other physical
health problems endemic to women whose lives are out of control and who,
prior to incarceration, have been masking the symptoms with alcohol and
other drugs. However, upon entry to the institution, women who have a history of illegal drug use are immediately placed in solitary confinement for
“observation,” which for those who are physically addicted means “cold
turkey” withdrawal without the benefit of transitional sedation.
Upon “settling in,” a part-time psychiatrist and three part-time psychologists are available primarily for individual counselling; most women prefer
one-on-one counselling to group processes because trust among the women
is tenuous, and the prison gossip grapevine is a potent means of losing any
semblance of privacy and dignity. Some women testify to the help they’ve
received from these counselling services, but others are skeptical, such as the
woman who said to me after she had met with a psychologist, “For all the help
she gave me I’d have done better talking to the walls.” A drug and alcohol
counselor is contracted through the Elizabeth Fry Society, which in some parts
of Canada has been in the forefront of progressive women’s prison reform and

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direct support to prisoners. This woman offers both individual and group
counselling, and has been a mainstay support for numerous women in
recovery in part because she does not have unrealistic expectations, and does
not make negative judgements when a woman suffers a relapse. To at least
some women’s benefit, the Society has also contracted a part-time counselor to
work with women in one-on-one personal development and with small focus
groups in the areas of life skills, parenting and anger management.

PROGRAMS AND SERVICES
The bulk of prison funding in any jurisdiction is allocated to security: stone
walls, fences, steel bars, laser beams, electronic doors and gates, guard towers,
surveillance cameras, weaponry, communications technology, and custodial
staff whose primary function is to prevent escape. All prisons have certain features in common, and prisoners who are transferred from one institution to
another find familiar policies and practices in all of them. However, prisons
also vary and have distinguishing characteristics according to many factors,
including the following:

· demographic composition of the prison population;
· levels of training or education of the staff;
· philosophies of the head administrators;
· policies enacted by jurisdictional authorities;
· geographic and cultural climates of the prison setting;
· degree to which outside groups participate as volunteers in the day-to-day
life of the institution;
extent
· to which prisoners are encouraged to interact with family members;
· levels of responsibility granted to prisoners in the running of the institution;
· level of turnover of both staff and prisoners;
· level of security to which prisoners are subjected;
· range of facilities to accommodate programs and services.
State-produced public relations brochures describing most “correctional facilities” focus on the last point, in keeping with the enduring ideal of
rehabilitation, even though “correctionalists” themselves have discredited rehabilitation as a realistic goal of penal institutions.